Review: Pierce Brosnan Proves He’s No Texan in ‘The Son’

Who requested another television series about a Texas oil-and-ranching dynasty? Perhaps nobody, but AMC has given us “The Son” anyway. It begins Saturday, and it’s ugly and hard to like.

Pierce Brosnan is Eli McCullough, a man known as the Colonel and the very definition of the Lone Star State.

“I was born on the same date as the Republic of Texas,” he reminds the crowd at his own birthday party in 1915, lest we miss the point. If it gives you pause that an Irish actor is trying to embody the quintessential Texan, it should; Mr. Brosnan never seems comfortable in the role.

Although early episodes are rooted in 1915, the premiere actually starts in 1849, when the young Eli (Jacob Lofland) is taken captive by Indians after a brutal encounter that leaves his mother and other family members dead. The 1915 Eli, now patriarch of a family with significant holdings in the Rio Grande Valley, is a ruthless fellow. For the benefit of anyone who slept through Psychology 101, the show keeps flashing back to Eli’s 1849 trauma to make sure we know that a child scarred by violence grows into a coldhearted adult.

This not very surprising insight is relevant to 1915 because the McCulloughs are at a crossroads. Eli is trying to move the family business away from ranching and into oil, believing that there is crude to be found under his land, and his vicious streak is very much in evidence. His youngest son, Pete (Henry Garrett), who unlike Dad has a conscience, is pushing back regarding his tactics.

“It’s up to people like us to set the example,” he tells Eli as they discuss whether to kill a man suspected of causing them trouble, “because if we don’t, this whole civilization slides backward.”

To which Eli responds: “You say slides backward, I say reverts to its natural state.”

And that, really, is the push-and-pull of the series, at least in the early going. It calls to mind the tension in “The Godfather” over staying criminal or going legit; heck, in that birthday-party scene, the men go off to talk business, reminiscent of that movie’s opening wedding scene. And this show, which is based on a Philipp Meyer novel, aspires to the same multigenerational sweep; presumably, were it to have a “Dallas”-like longevity, younger family members would grow into positions of power as the family enters into the modern era.

Sticking around to watch them do so, though, will take endurance, because the opening episodes feature a lot of violence and not many characters you really want to latch onto. Eli has an older son, Phineas (David Wilson Barnes), who works the banking crowd, trying to find investors willing to take a gamble on oil. There is also Pedro Garcia, “the patriarch of the last great Spanish family in South Texas,” as his character description puts it, whose land sits between the McCullough holdings and the border, and who is trying to work both sides of the simmering resentment between Americans and the Mexican raiders who still view them as interlopers.

Oh, there are female characters, too, though they aren’t given much to do in early episodes other than have sex. Eventually some emerge, especially in the flashback sequences, in which a young Indian woman, Prairie Flower (Elizabeth Frances), develops a romantic relationship with Eli. It’s a modest spark in an otherwise foreboding series.